The Agile Elevator Speech

I was going to also call this post, "How to talk about Agile to the non-Agile" but thought the title above was more appropriate. Joe Little from Agile and Business blog has a post was trying to figure out how to tell friends and family about what Agile and Lean are without having to spend a lot of time getting them up to speed. In his post, he ends up summarizing it as:

* Focus on delivering small slices of concrete business value frequently (1-4 weeks)
* Work with a small team of people, to enable them to be as productive as possible
* Use concrete, understandable results to allow all parties to adapt and move forward
* Arrange things so that change and learning are benefits
* Tell the truth, and make the important things as visible as possible
* Minimize waste and extra effort; maximize customer value, don't impress with hard work

I think this is an excellent introduction to both Agile and Lean that can be accomplished in a few minutes and give the listener an idea without having to know much about software development, product development or manufacturing. Read more in his post on how he led up to this list.